Younger Than Jesus

Ambling through old Click Opera posts, I noticed one I'd missed. New York's New Museum, which I've come across before through its association with Rhizome, is currently mounting a show it calls The Generational: Younger Than Jesus.

The Generational is the name for the museum's new "signature Triennial", and this year it focusses on artists born since 1976. They're all younger than 33, which was when Jesus died. This intentionally attention-grabbing title is to draw attention to an exhibition that surveys a generation; my generation, in fact.

"Known to demographers, marketers, sociologists, and pundits variously as the Millennials, Generation Y, iGeneration, and Generation Me, this age group has yet to be described in any way beyond their habits of consumption. “Younger Than Jesus” will begin to examine the visual culture this generation has created to date", says the website.

Now, I have a bit of an interest in definitions of my generation. Whilst I feel a little uncomfortably partisan at times, as if I were cheering on a team, underneath is a real fascination with how narratives of generations are created.

Questions like: How does this generation contrast with previous ones? How much "better" is it? How much "worse"? How do we measure better or worse? Which is another way of asking what is important to us. And also, of course, what isn't. What do we want? How are we going about it? Who is doing it?

On the whole, I feel quite confident about us, the partisan-ness coming out in pride, even. I'm happy that homophobia and racism are increasingly things of the past, almost banal, I'm happy with an apparent growth in political engagement, I'm happy with our post-materialist aspirations. (Despite being portrayed, as the New Museum notes, as a generation that defines itself through consumption, I actually think this generation is aiming to define itself through ideas and actions, rather than purchases. Consumption - not just of material goods but of natural resources, is becoming ugly as well as unsustainable).

Of course this is my angle on my section of my generation. It's actually incredibly difficult to narratise a whole group of people, although big world events help. If the World Wars and May 68 were defining moments for previous generations, I'm pretty sure 9/11 will be seen as the moment that defined ours. That inevitability is rather depressing, eliciting a wry, resigned smile from those younger than Jesus.

So it will be interesting to see how the Younger Than Jesus exhibition tackles these slippery problems. How will it mediate its choices to its visitors? Will it step back and hope the art does its talking for it, or will it guide the viewer through the show with a heavy dose of "this is us" narratology? In the end, one exhibition -- no matter how much it is defined post-event as such -- can never define a generation, and the interesting part will be to pick out themes and preoccupations despite the exhibition's intentions.